Pralaya rocked wildly as the blunt-nosed, two-and-a-half-ton missiles blasted away, first from one side, then the other. Chaudry realized with some surprise that his high-peaked cap had been knocked from his head and was lying on the deck by his feet.
“Missile four … fire!”
Other missiles were rising on flaming contrails from the other vessels in the squadron. The sky to the northwest was aflame with pinpoints of dazzling brilliance.
The Battle of the Arabian Sea had just begun in earnest.
Tombstone was in the 04 deck corridor just outside Jefferson’s CATCC when the GQ alarm sounded, the harsh clangor of the gong mingling with the metallic rattle of hundreds of feet hitting passageways and deck ladders.
“Now hear this, now hear this,” the 1-MC on the bulkhead brayed.
“General quarters, general quarters. All hands man your battle stations. Set Condition Alpha throughout the ship.”
He stepped through the door into the red-lit CATCC, brushing past the heavy curtains that kept light from the passageway from leaking through and ruining the night vision of the sailors manning the ranks of radar displays in the room. CAG was sitting on the leather-backed throne that gave him an unobstructed view of the principal displays and status boards.
Tombstone walked over to where several other squadron officers were looking on. He stood next to Lieutenant j.g. Pete Costello, another Navy aviator who was serving a stretch as VF-97’s CATCC liaison.
“Hey, Hitman,” Tombstone whispered, addressing the j.g. by his running name. “What’s the gouge?”
“Flash just came in from the Vickie,” Hitman replied. He nodded toward the forward bulkhead. Forty feet beyond it was the ship’s CIC, where white blips freckled a huge amber radar display. “Surface targets. Word is they’re Osa IIS and they’ve just popped their missiles!”
Osas. Tombstone knew what those were. The name was the NATO designation, osa being the Russian word for “wasp.” Over 128 feet long and displacing 215 tons, the Osa was a larger version of the American patrol torpedo boats of WW II. Instead of torpedos, however, they mounted four large, ribbed canisters, two to port, two to starboard. A twin 30-mm rapid-fire cannon was mounted forward, and another astern.
Light, handy, and powerful, an Osa II could make thirty-five knots and had a range of 750 miles at a cruising speed of twenty-five knots. The Indians were known to have eight of the machines, purchased in 1976.
A substantial body of opinion and debate had been hung from the threat of small, powerful missile boats like the Osas. Critics of the modern Navy, especially critics of the big nuclear carriers, repeatedly and vociferously insisted that the large surface vessel had gone the way of the dinosaur. Why, after all, spend billions of dollars on an enormous and relatively slow target that could be destroyed by a million-dollar missile fired from a boat small enough and cheap enough to be built by the hundreds?
The missile carried by Osas was a proven ship-killer. With a warhead weighing over half a ton and packed with 880 pounds of high explosive, it could do grievous damage to any modern warship. Three SS-N-2 missiles fired from Egyptian patrol boats in Alexandria Harbor had sunk the Israeli destroyer Elath in 1967. Others had sunk a number of Pakistani ships during the 1971 war, including the destroyer Khaiber.
It would take a large number of SS-N-2s to sink a carrier as large as Jefferson, or great luck, or both … but there were sixteen of the ship-killers out there now. And a hit by only one in the right place could cripple the aircraft carrier and make further launch and recovery operations impossible.
“Range twenty-six miles,” a voice said from a bulkhead speaker. Someone had set the CATCC intercom to pick up the voices from CIC. The only aircraft Jefferson had up at the moment were four Tomcats on BARCAP, a Prowler on ECM, and one of the ever-circling Hawkeyes. “Twelve missiles … correction. Fourteen missiles in the air, closing at six hundred knots.
Mach.9, Tombstone thought, calculating in his head. At that speed, the missiles would cover twenty-six miles in two and a half minutes. He glanced at a clock on the wall, a twenty-four-hour clock with a bright red sweep second hand. It was now 0740.
“Who’s got CAP?” CAG asked suddenly.
Tombstone glanced across at the flight status board and read the names grease-penciled onto the clear acrylic. “Garrison and Wayne are BARCAP One, CAG,” he said. “Marinaro and Kingsly are BARCAP Two. Grant and Rostenkowski are on Alert Five.”
He felt a bitter, growing frustration. His place was with his friends, with Batman and Coyote, not down here in the 04 deck caverns of CATCC.
“Prowlers?”
Tombstone checked the board again. “Samelli in 603.”
“Right. Let’s get the Alert Five up there,” CAG said. “Notify CIC.”
“Aye, sir,” a j.g. said. “And inform the Captain and the admiral that we’ve got a situation here. We’re going to need to get the rest of our Tomcats airborne, ASAP.”
“The admiral is in transit, CAG,” another officer reminded Marusko.
“Damn. What a time to be caught out of the office.”
“Shit, Tombstone,” Costello whispered. One of the displays had been set to show surface targets, a feed from CIC. The blips representing the missiles were edging closer with each sweep of the beam. “We won’t have time to launch any more aircraft!”
“Batman and Army will get them,” Tombstone whispered in reply. But he did not feel the confidence he put into the words. “The Indies goofed.”
“How, Stoney?”
“They launched from maximum range. Styx missiles only have a range of about twenty-seven, twenty-eight miles. Soviet doctrine is to close to ten or twelve nautical miles before launching. They just gave us longer to shoot them down.” He nodded toward another repeater display, this one with much of the west coast of India outlined in white light and showing those positions of India’s surface navy units that were known.
“I’m more worried about their heavier ships. Their destroyers carry an improved Styx. They’ll be able to hit us from out to about forty, maybe forty-five miles. But it’ll be a while before they can get in position.”
The intent of the Indians had been fuzzy until now. Because of the location of Turban Station, two hundred miles south of the Indian-Pakistan border, there’d been considerable question about whether the ships deploying out of Bombay and India’s west coast were preparing to attack the Soviet-American squadron, or to bypass Kreml and Jefferson in order to hit Karachi or blockade the Pakistani coast.
Tombstone watched the approaching missiles. Their plans had just grown considerably less fuzzy. The Indians were out for blood. The main body of their fleet — two carriers, a large cruiser, and at least eight destroyers — was still a hundred miles away. Tombstone had assumed that the first Indian strike, if it came, would be by air. “CAG!” a radarman chief called. “CIC reports new contacts … multiple contacts over Jamnagar. Bearing zero-four-oh, range one-six-five.”
“Multiple contacts over Rajkot,” another sailor announced. “Bearing zero-four-five, range two-double-oh.”
“Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Victor Tango One-one,” a radio voice announced over CATCC’s 1-MC. “We have evidence of massive air activity all along the coast.”
“Roger, Victor Tango One-one. We have them.”
“Ah, Homeplate, Victor Tango. We’re also running into considerable jamming activity. This looks like it could be a major attack.”
Stunned silence reigned in CATCC as the impact of what was happening sank in.
“Now hear this,” the Captain’s voice said over the speaker. “This is Captain Fitzgerald in CIC. Listen up, people. On my authority, weapons are free. Ready VF-97 and the rest of VF-95 for immediate launch. And I want more Prowlers up there now!”